William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes - Page 3

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped.

A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.

At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.

He belonged to that army known as invincible in peace, invisible in war.

An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every enactment, every change of rule which impairs this principle weakens the army, impairs its value, and defeats the very object of its existence.

You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

The war now is away back in the past, and you can tell what books cannot. When you talk, you come down to the practical realities just as they happened. You all know this is not soldiering here. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror, but if it has to come, I am there.

If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm.

The voice of the people is the voice of humbug.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

Grant stood by me when I was crazy.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

Many and many a person in Georgia asked me why we did not go to South Carolina; and, when I answered that we were en route for that State, the invariable reply was, - Well, if you will make those people feel the utmost severities of war, we will pardon you for your desolation of Georgia.

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!

War is at best barbarism.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.